Belief in Precognition Rises When People Feel Helpless

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Predicting the future may be impossible, but that doesn't stop
many people from believing that some have the power to do so.

In fact, a new study finds people are more prone to believe in
prognostication when they feel their lives are out of their own
control, suggesting that faith in paranormal
forecasting provides a kind of coping mechanism for humans.

"It can be unpleasant to think that we aren't really in
control of our lives, and people go to great lengths
psychologically to "trick" themselves into feeling more in
control," said study researcher Katharine Greenway, a
psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia. "One
way they can do this is by enhancing the feeling that the future
is predictable, so that they know what is going to happen."

One in four Americans believes that precognitive abilities exist,
and thousands of dollars are
spent on psychics every year, despite any scientific proof
that our futures can be predicted, according to the study.

Greenway said the new study stemmed from wanting to test her
theory that a sense of control is vital to why many people cling
to the myth that the future is knowable.

In the study, the researchers divided the 85 college
undergraduate student participants into two groups. One group
wrote a description about a time they felt in control (the
high-control group), and another group wrote about a time they
felt out of control (the low-control group). Then, each group
answered questions about their beliefs in the paranormal.
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The results showed that those in the low-control group showed
stronger beliefs in future foretelling.

The findings suggest that not only do people turn to
superstitious beliefs as a coping technique when feeling out of
control, but also that this belief also helps them to feel that
they're once again in charge of
their fate, the researchers said.

Study participants who read a short paragraph stating that
precognition was scientifically proven, reported feeling more
control over their futures compared with those who had read a
short paragraph saying the phenomenon was a myth.

Interestingly, people only put faith in foresight when they felt
out of control. When the researchers told a high-control group
that precognition was real, the participants didn't report
feeling any more control over their lives.

"These findings point towards the malleability of the human
psychological system," Greenway said. "If we feel as though we
lack control, we perform 'psychological gymnastics' to help us
feel in control once more. This all happens largely outside
conscious awareness. We are a biased and sometimes irrational
species, but adaptively so."

Other experts had mixed views on the findings.

Bastiaan Rutjens, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam,
said, "This is one of the first studies that shows that such
'compensation' for lack of control actually helps, and as such
has functional value."

The results show that when people feel that life is out of
control, they "basically just go out of their way to restore the
notion that the world is orderly and under control," Rutjens
said.

However, Kristin Laurin, who studies organizational behavior at
Stanford University, questioned the finding. "For precognition to
give me that added control, I need to be the one who has
precognition — it doesn't necessarily help me that there may be
other people who can predict the future," she said.

Laurinalso said that if a person were to know in advance what was
going to happen to them, they could actually feel that they have
no control over the event. "If it's possible, for example, to
predict accurately at what age I will die, or what kind of person
I will marry, then nothing I can do will change that," she said.

Jennifer Whitson, a psychologistat the University of Texas at
Austin, disagreed. "It seems that we like there to be some
control in the world, but it doesn't necessarily have to be us,"
that can foresee our own futures, Whitson said.